Rare treats in Carnatic Music – 1

A lot of popular ragas and compositions which feature regularly in carnatic music concerts. It is not uncommon to run into elaborate renditions of ragas like tODi, bhairavi, SankarabharaNam, kalyANi, kAmbhOji, kharaharapriya (“the big six”), as well as pantuvarali, pUrvikalyANi, mOhanam, madhyamAvati and many many others of similar stature. Even though some complain about the seeming monotony or repetition of the ragas, most Carnatic music aficionados never tire listening to the ragas and the compositions they are intimately familiar with and love!

However, there is also a special charm when musicians present new concepts. Many musicians of the current as well as previous generations have sought to go against the usual theme, and present rare ragas. For example, you find musicians like T.S. Kalyanaraman handle rare vivAdhi mELas with ease (as well as invent new ragas). In the recent generations, handling of rare ragas are much more common. Although, there are certainly exceptions to this, a big majority of these fall into ragas which are usually completely new to us in the sense we may not have heard renditions of them at all. It does make them special.

However, even more special to me are the times when a musician does something unique/different/new in a raga that is not exactly of the “completely new and rare” kind. It is most special to me when the raga is something that I like, and I want to hear artists try something elaborative in it, a want that is usually not satisfied. I have a few examples of these in my collection, and I thought I would share them here.

Here is the first one. Try to guess the raga and the artist. Let me know what you think of this piece.

11 Responses to “Rare treats in Carnatic Music – 1”

Arun: 🙂 – Besides that, the raga you were thinking of uses D1 on descent and so you have ndp, pdp, ndm etc, which use D1 giving it a more sombre touch. This one doesnt use D1 at all – and thus is not as sombre.

Arun, I got a lot of feel of that ‘close’ sampoorna raga and also enough indications that it is NOT that raga. After the “reveal”, I did not feel too bad since though I know the song in that raga I do not have a good conception of that raga but I am glad I was in the ball park. One downer about my own perception is I got the feel of another raga which has the highly oscillating N in ‘P N S’ but turned out it was an oscillating ‘P D S’ with possibly N thrown in around that prayoga…

Arun: When I first listened to it (dont remember when – have had this for a long time), I was able to guess it based on one particular, little part of the alapana which mirrors the song – so I got lucky :-). But also at that time my swara identification skills probably would have been much weaker – I did not resort to them (for new ragas) until much later.

I know this song, but I’m not so familiar with the raga itself. The first part sounded familiar in parts but almost vivadi-esque in others and I was quite confused until 2:00+. The violinist (TNK?) played a very concise and definitive sketch. Here’s an illuminating alapanai in sAlagabhairavi by SSI and TNK (notice the violinist uses the same types of ascending and descending patterns as he does in this alapanai): http://www.sendspace.com/file/luwwuc

hmm… I listened to it a couple times, and all I could decipher was a probable s-r-m-p-d-s ascent, with a ni and ga in the descent… was reminded of “Naadha Thanumanisam” and was dying to remember the raga of that song… remembered it…but was still not sure, because I have listened to the aforementioned krithi, probably a couple times in my entire life. 🙂

So, went ahead and revealed the answer… The revealed raga is totally new to me… have stumbled upon the name somewhere but have never listened to any krithis in this ragam before.

Arun: You were pretty close indeed. One does run into the krithi at a concert, albeit not that frequently. IIRC it is an old raga.

I thought it was Kharaharapriya eventually, although I wasn’t quite sure in the beginning. Kudos to your knowledge of ragas and their differences in prayoga. When I get to learn something new everyday, life is good.Arun: Thanks phil! – although I do not really know much about this attractive raga.

Narayani, The song I think that follows will be Rama nee ve gani nannu rakshimpche vaarevaru raa.

Arun: Welcome to my blog Sivapriya. But no, it is not narayani. The answer is there in the post itself at the every end. It is “hidden” so use your mouse and drag to select the “blank portion” that is below the “Select the text below to reveal the answer (I hope this technique works for all of you!):” part at the end of the post to see the answer